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<title>Regrets from a Despised Life by SabineElectricHeart (TheLifeAndLiesOfFerns)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28660251">Regrets from a Despised Life</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLifeAndLiesOfFerns/pseuds/SabineElectricHeart'>SabineElectricHeart (TheLifeAndLiesOfFerns)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Code:Realize ～創世の姫君～ | Code: Realize - Guardian of Rebirth (Visual Novel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adulthood, Alternate Universe, F/M, Loss, Marriage, Orphans, Pregnancy, Romance, Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:21:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28660251</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLifeAndLiesOfFerns/pseuds/SabineElectricHeart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After many years, he runs into her once again. This encounter elicits many thoughts and regrets.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cardia Beckford/Abraham Van Helsing, Cardia Beckford/Other(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Regrets from a Despised Life</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He catches sight of her across the busy salon and does a double take.</p><p>Tonight, he was at work, being the military bodyguard for the speaker of the House of Lords, Marquess Renfield. It was terribly boring, but it was good money for while he would not be able to return to service in the colonies, and money was something he desperately needed.</p><p>He expected nothing out of the evening, and this happens. It is the first time he has seen her since that memorial service where he kept his face hidden at the back of the crowd, silently mourning the old man he did not really care for, but whose loss he strangely felt.</p><p>After the untimely death, she and her brother skipped town in the silence and darkness of a moonless night to places unknown. Good riddance, most of his other neighbours had thought, the two orphans were undesirable, not to mention an expense to the collective if they had stayed.</p><p>Their mother, dead years prior, dabbled in herbal medicines and rituals, easily branded as sorcery amongst the ignorant townsfolk, and their father built and played with the mechanical beasts on his spare time. A double offense for the children, two out of two.</p><p>She sits, head down and legs crossed, at the dinner table, even when all the other guests had already stood up and began discussing futilities of government.</p><p>He is taken aback by her beauty for a few seconds and realises he is standing in the middle of a crowded room just staring at someone he has not seen in nearly eight years.</p><p>In the end, he supposes, she really must have some sort of magical powers. He could feel it even when he was only but a boy. He harassed and attacked her, perhaps most out of all boys in the village, but he rationalized that she had cast a spell on him over any others. A shame he was not as wise, or even jaded, at that young age as he is now. Things could have gone a different path.</p><p>She turns towards him then and spots him, surprised to see his eyes are firmly set on her. Her brow furrows in the way it used to when he watched her while she was washing laundry down at the river and she was concentrating hard on the task at hand.</p><p>Unsure what to do, he lowers his gaze to his feet momentarily, contemplating his options. He decides, possibly against better judgement, to go talk to her. After all, she looks lonely and, ultimately, so very beautiful.</p><p>"Abraham." She states, more as an acknowledgement than a greeting.</p><p>The coldness in her voice surprises him. They were not friends when she lived next door to his house, he knows that, but neither were they enemies. They could possibly be considered enemies by default and he was often unkind towards her, but that was usually out of a teenage boy's idea of affection.</p><p>"Cardia." Abraham says as warmly as he can, in the hope she will offer him the chair next to her.</p><p>"I don't know what you want, Abraham…" She bitterly spits, an uncharacteristic harshness to her tone. "But I'm not in the headspace to deal with any more abuse. Please, just leave me alone."</p><p>He almost falters, finding it hard not to respond with something equally as unfriendly. "Cardia, I just came over to say hello and ask how you are."</p><p>"Right." Cardia replies without looking at Abraham and gets up. "I need to go find my husband."</p><p>His heart grows cold while he stares at her. Married. He knew that. Of course, a peasant orphan from some backwater in western England would not be invited for this party on her own merits.</p><p>As she stands, however, the frost increases. The former soldier realises she is about five months pregnant, the bump still reasonably small but visible all the same.</p><p>Abraham is immediately reminded of his wife, pretty, dainty and ultimately dull, laid up on the sofa at home, nursing her own pregnancy bump. In that second, he thinks of how much he would prefer Cardia to be the one in his home, pregnant with his child.</p><p>It would not be a leap to assume this was said husband’s child, the elusive man he knows so little about. He remembers reading in some letter from his younger brother that she had married, even if he did not know for sure whom it was. Either a French nobleman or a Swiss engineer. Or was an Englishman? It did not matter. Her brother had also married well, into nobility, which had not been expected.</p><p>To Abraham, it seems unfair that they got their happy endings when he did not.</p><p>He watches Cardia walk away, wiping her eyes. He wonders what has upset her and feels a rush of righteous anger towards the fabled husband, whomever or whatever he may be, convincing himself that it must be that man's fault, whatever could have been done. It was not because they met after so long, he surely did not have that much power over that woman. Had he?</p><p>Unsure if this is justified or just another of his prejudices, Abraham drinks up a forgotten flute of champagne and continues his rounds. The brunette woman that inhabited his childish fantasies was nowhere to be seen. She probably had left straight to her coach, returned home somewhere he hopes he never knows.</p><p>The hours drag on after that, almost as if he is staring at the tiny hand of the pendulum clock on the drawing room move slowly through its loops. Finally, the bells on Westminster decrees it to be midnight and he began heading back to his wife and a life he despises.</p><p>As he gets down from his coach and walks onto his doorstep, Abraham wonders why he is married to Rebecca, when he is still desperately in love with the demon spawn he is meant to hate.</p>
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